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The Third Day of ISST Summer School: What Will You Attend?

Take a moment to read through the descriptions of the workshops ISST is offering for the third day of Summer School in St. Petersburg, June 13th, then click the "Register" button below to make your choice for Day 3.

Option 1: Couples Group Schema Therapy

by Paul Kasyanik & Elena Romanova

Group Schema Therapy (GST) for Couples is a new integrative approach blending the  power of group therapeutic factors with dyadic couples work. This workshop presents the model basics with demonstrations of core interventions.

In this approach collaborative assessment experiences provide couples with a deeper understanding of “the schema chemistry” fueled by core unmet needs which attracted them and eventually set them against each other. The group setting provides important vicarious learning opportunities. Couples observe how different schemas and coping modes influence the relationships of others, allowing them to better identify and resolve their own “core cycles and schema clashes.”

Protected intimacy of in-couple communication and group exercises provides corrective emotional experiences like “mutual reparenting” and couples imagery rescripting. Happy Child Mode exercises supply positive emotional energy and facilitate more optimistic attitudes towards their partnership.

Learning Objectives

- Understand and apply the GST model and interventions to couples’ treatment;

- Learn how to teach partners strategies for identifying, accepting and deactivating dysfunctional modes and schemas in group 

- Learn how to facilitate couples re-parenting & imagery rescripting

-Experience opportunities to do interventions in demonstrations 

Training modalities: didactic and experiential

Option 2: Overcoming "Stuckness," the Client's and Your Own: Learning the "ABCs" of Schema Therapy

by Joan Farrell and Ida Shaw

This workshop focuses on of group and individual ST interventions to prepare, motivate and engage clients in the change process.

The ABCs of Schema Therapy are steps we have identified to increase client's:

A=awareness of emotions and needs

B=behavior change

C=connection

The ABCs are a way to present to client’s the Schema Therapy work needed to take on their maladaptive coping and dysfunctional critic modes of clients. They are also a helpful mnemonic for therapists.

Since Schema Therapy works by mode rather than symptom it is seen as transdiagnostic: the ABCs apply independent of diagnosis. The importance of integrating experiential, cognitive and behavioral interventions in a manner salient to clients is stressed. The training will incorporate didactic sections, demonstrations by trainers in which the workshop participants play a group of clients, and opportunities for participants to practice these interventions with coaching and feedback. 

Option 3: Two Separate Workshops

Morning Workshop: Research into Schema Therapy in Your Clinical Practice 

by Arnoud Arntz

A workshop for clinicians and clinical researchers who want to investigate ingredients of schema therapy, new applications, or contribute to the evidence base. 

In this workshop I will discuss designs and methods that clinicians and clinical researchers can use to test relevant issues for the evidence base of Schema Therapy (ST) in relatively small samples (from 6 patients on). I will also discuss some of the most important issues on the research agenda of ST.

The focus will primarily be on:

1. (i) case series designs to test ST in new types of patients or to replicate previous findings
2. (ii) experimental designs to test central techniques in ST that can be done in small samples

The workshop includes didactic presentation but will also invite participants to play with their ideas and think out designs to test them, whilst feedback from the workshop leader is given. Moreover, participants can also bring in their own plans to have them discussed. 

The workshop will focus more on conceptual thinking rather than on (statistical) techniques. 

Note. The workshop is not about psychometric studies. 

Afternoon Workshop: Training in Schema Therapy Using the Competency-Spiral Approach

by Gerhard Zarbock

10 Steps into Individual Schema Therapy: An Invitation to Experience, Discover and Reflect 

This mini-workshop uses a newly developed teaching device, the Competency-Spiral Approach, to introduce you to individual schema therapy, developing your understanding and offering essential schema therapeutic skills in a systematic manner. 

At the beginning of the workshop we jump right into the theme by exploring a mode activation via imagery. We then reflect on how a mode activation feels from the inside. After this experience we define conceptually a mode and provide you with a verbal map showing the landmark terms of the model. As teaching tools we will use self experience, imagery, peer practice, short lectures, group discussion, creative art work and short demonstrations on stage.

You will experience the basic schema therapeutic strategies (e.g., contact vulnerable child, circumvent detached protector, protect vulnerable child, dis-empower punitive parent, console and re-educate vulnerable child). The workshop ends with your personal feedback, addressing your positive experiences as well as your reservations and problems with the schema approach. At the end you will get some written material listing the essential features of individual schema therapy to take home for further training. 

Have You Decided? Make Your Choice By Clicking 'Register' Below

ISST Summer School will take place June 11th through the 13th. The conference venue will be the centrally located Holiday Inn St. Petersburg Moskovskye Vorota. 

Don't miss this opportunity to explore the magical St. Petersburg White Nights Festival together with fellow ISST colleagues. Reunite with your ISST friends and make new connections with fellow colleagues who share your passion for schema therapy from around the world.

Visit the new ISST website for more details about the conference, including program listings, and exciting social adventures. Don't Miss Out: Register Now.

It's a great time to review your choices for your second day of Summer School, June 12th. Take a moment to read through the descriptions, then click the "Register" button below to make your choice for Day 2.

Option 1: Individual Schema Therapy for Axis I Disorders

by Eshkol Rafaeli & Offer Maurer

The schema mode model, originally developed for the treatment of personality disorders, is gradually proving itself to be distinctly suited to address the vexing problems faced by individuals who suffer from various Axis-I disorders as well. Disorders such as depression, social anxiety, eating disorders, PTSD, and OCD are often highly comorbid with each other and with personality disorders, a fact which helps explain why even state-of-the-art methods for their treatment often have less-than- desirable effects. 

Indeed, the complexity of problems, the interpersonal dysfunction that often accompanies them, and the difficulty forming trusting and collaborative bonds with the therapist often leave individuals with primary Axis-I disorders in great distress. 

The schema therapy model, and particularly its recent developments which emphasize the role of modes, explicitly addresses schemas (and associated core beliefs), emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal difficulties, with the therapeutic relationship as the primary vehicle for change, make it highly suitable to target the entrenched belief systems and high levels of avoidance characteristic of both personality disorders and many axis-I disorders. 

The workshop will address the following issues: 

• a)  The problem of high comorbidity, which makes disorder-specific interventions less applicable (and which calls for the trans-diagnostic thinking characteristic of ST).
• b)  Relatedly, the manner in which Axis-II pathology interferes with evidence-based techniques and protocols for addressing Axis-I problems - and the solutions that can be found in ST for such interference.
• c)  Finally, the problem that arises with CBT and other evidence-based approaches which are premised on the presence of a “healthy adult” within the client. Sadly, many clients enter therapy with a weak-to-non-existent healthy adult mode, a realization which is at the core of ST.

ST theory and techniques will be discussed, with the following emphases: 

• a)  The importance of developing a formulation and treatment plan that addresses the underlying mode dynamics characteristic of the individuals suffering from particular disorders (Depression, Social Anxiety, OCD, PTSD, etc.).
• b)  The manner in which assessing the currently-active mode drives differential therapist responses.
• c)  The specific models suggested for each of the disorders, and the implementation of these models. 

Option 2: Child & Adolescent Group Schema Therapy

by Elena Romanova & Maria Galimzyanova

This workshop will present the ST model for working with Children and adolescents in groups developed by Drs. Elena Romanova and Maria Galimzyanova. The approach is consistent with the ST model for children and adolescents and the Group ST model approved by the ISST for certification, combining a wide range of experiential interventions grounded in cognitive and behavioral change work.

Core interventions include: group limited reparenting, group imagery re-scripting, mode-specific group role-plays, experiential group work and the distinctive two therapist model that is considered crucial for maintaining the essence of limited reparenting. The use of drawings, mode based play therapy, storytelling and fairytale therapy techniques, working with finger puppets and marionettes, sand-play, metaphors, mode role plays, imagery, “Inner House” and the use of flashcards are all described or demonstrated. These interventions can also be used in individual schema therapy and this use of them is also discussed dependent upon the interests of participants. Demonstrations by trainers with participants playing adolescents they are treating. Schema-coaching with parents is also described.

The workshop incorporates: didactic sections with power-point and group discussion, demonstrations by trainers in which the workshop participants play patients, DVD segments of the trainers leading a group and many opportunities for participants to practice group interventions with coaching and feedback.

Option 3: Advances and Challenges in Working with Complex Trauma, Dissociation and Personality Disorders

by Joan Farrell & Ida Shaw

This workshop focuses on ST interventions for the challenges these clients present and the schema activation and mode triggering therapists encounter in working with them. Creative adaptations of imagery rescripting and the development of the client’s “Good Parent” (part of the Healthy Adult mode) will be major foci. Techniques to deal with flashbacks, avoidance, detachment and dissociation are addressed – both in the session and plans for clients to use outside of therapy. The workshop will include case examples of clients who were successfully treated with schema therapy. The training will incorporate didactic sections, demonstrations by trainers in which the workshop participants play a group of clients, and opportunities for participants to practice these interventions with coaching and feedback. 

Have You Decided? Make Your Choice By Clicking 'Register' Below

ISST Summer School will take place June 11th through the 13th. The conference venue will be the centrally located Holiday Inn St. Petersburg Moskovskye Vorota. 

Don't miss this opportunity to explore the magical St. Petersburg White Nights Festival together with fellow ISST colleagues. Reunite with your ISST friends and make new connections with fellow colleagues who share your passion for schema therapy from around the world.

Visit the new ISST website for more details about the conference, including program listings, and exciting social adventures. Don't Miss Out: Register Now.

Pocket the Savings and Beat the Early-Bird Discount Deadline of April 10th

Which workshop will you attend on June 11th in St. Petersburg, your first day of ISST Summer School? Take a moment to read through the descriptions, then click the "Register" button below to lock-in your Early-Bird Savings, and your choice for Day 1.

Option 1: Schema Therapy for Children and Adolescents 

by Maria Galimzyanova & Christof Loose

In this workshop, first the schema therapeutic conceptual model (schemas, modes, coping strategies) and the underlying theory, are briefly outlined. Related to the children’s age, one of the 18 schemas defined by J.Young is described with their typical child and adolescent cognitions, coping strategies, and parental characteristics.

Other topics include the multimodal diagnostic techniques (therapeutic relationship, psycho-education and empathic confrontation. Another focus is laid on working with drawings, mode-based play therapy, storytelling and fairytale therapy techniques, working with finger puppets and marionettes, sand-play, metaphors, chair work, imagery, "Inner House", the use of flash cards.

Also we’ll focus on the work with parents in terms of "Schema Coaching." The participants will have a chance to play and enjoy themselves, experiencing the techniques and participating in different exercises used in ST-CA. 

Option 2: Schema Couples Therapy: Healing Partners in a Love Relationship

by Eckhard Roediger & Travis Atkinson

Join us during this skill and intervention-focused workshop that starts with a brief introduction of how the schema therapy model can take advantage of the latest science in love relationships to improve outcomes for partners within a couple.

After the introduction, we will cover three key parts:

Each section includes clear illustrations, relevant video demonstrations of real couples, and practical role-plays to help you apply the interventions effectively with your couples.

Objectives of the Workshop

1. Identify core destructive cycles in couple dynamics, linking past and present associations with each partner’s schemas and modes. Set therapeutic goals as antidotes based on schemas and cycles.

2. Effectively restructure negative cycles of a couple to address schemas and create new beliefs reinforced through a new pattern of emotional engagement.

3. Solidify safety and security through continued reinforcement of the healthy cycle in a couple to heal injuries and schemas, minimizing the possibility of relapse. 

Option 3: Empathic Confrontation in Individual Schema Therapy

by Neele Reiss & Friederike Vogel

Maladaptive coping modes such as Detached Protector or Self-Aggrandizer Mode are the cause of major difficulties in treating patients with various personality disorders. Rigid behavior patterns associated with these modes significantly influence other people’s, even therapist’s, reactions, often triggering them to behave in ways that reinforce the patient’s maladaptive schemas.

Being specifically tailored towards changing maladaptive coping modes, empathic confrontation is a therapeutic intervention in Schema Therapy that is part of limited reparenting and at the same time a mode change strategy in its own right. It is a critical and difficult intervention for accomplishing the overall goal of Schema Therapy- to help patients get their adult needs met in a healthy manner – as it points out the negative effects of their currently used unhealthy mode driven behaviors and assists them in learning and using more adaptive behaviors.

In this workshop the steps of empathic confrontation in Schema Therapy will be outlined to the participants. Difficult situations with patients in maladaptive coping modes in the treatment room and the empathic confrontation of the coping mode in these situations will be demonstrated. Participants will be given the possibility to try the different steps in empathic confrontation in small group role plays. 

Have You Decided? Make Your Choice By Clicking 'Register' Below

ISST Summer School will take place June 11th through the 13th. The conference venue will be the centrally located Holiday Inn St. Petersburg Moskovskye Vorota. 

Don't miss this opportunity to explore the magical St. Petersburg White Nights Festival together with fellow ISST colleagues. Reunite with your ISST friends and make new connections with fellow colleagues who share your passion for schema therapy from around the world.

Visit the new ISST website for more details about the conference, including program listings, and exciting social adventures. Register now.